


Through Colors

by leadingrebel



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Distance, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Highlighters, Hurt/Comfort, minor fluff, season 4
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-27
Updated: 2017-07-27
Packaged: 2018-12-07 18:23:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11629281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leadingrebel/pseuds/leadingrebel
Summary: The last piece of paper he pulled out from under the rest was covered in crossed-out words, not a single one clear.Stiles stopped in his tracks and held the paper in front of him, his eyes roaming throught the words again and again, the trembling of his hands a little bit more stable.He knew the word under all the angry ink lines.It was the same, every time.Banshee.





	Through Colors

The movement of the mattress made him open his eyes suddenly.

He blinked a couple of times to try and hide the probable sleepiness on his expression.

He tried to deny that he was falling asleep but… he was falling asleep.

He held back a yawn and looked around the room.

The darkness behind the windows was making itself more visible through the curtains, due to the white light that iluminated everything from its place in the ceiling. The papers covering the desk and the half-closed laptop reminded —reproached— him the wasted hours of the night before.

If the looking for information ended up just with no information maybe Stiles could deal with it better —probably not—. But each time it just ended up with a bunch of new questions, making room for themshelves in the part of his brain that kept him awake until he lost conciousness the hard way. Each concept was conected to the next one, each hability was conditionated by its story context, each story mixed new beings, each being fed from some other.

The supernatural world was so vast that it continously went on before his eyes. Stiles couldn’t tell what was true and what was false, what real and what made up, and that was driving him crazy. And, yet, every night he sat again in front of the screen, countless papers of notes under his hands.

Everything seemed as useless as he felt.

He couldn’t define his place in the pack, yet. His play, his utility.

The only thing he had got done was being posessed.

Kill people.

He closed his eyes hard for a second and opened them again as soon as he could —because the only thing he saw was Allison’s face—, the hand over the sheets close in a fist and his jaw tensed up.

_Breathe._

_Breathe._

The red thread in his board stared at him accusingly.

_It was you._

_Her blood is on your hands._

He blew out a quick expiration through his nose and got up, as casually as possible, from the bed, walked towards the desk and entertained himself putting some order in the spreaded out papers, trying to hide the shaking of his hands.

The last piece of paper he pulled out from under the rest was covered in crossed-out words, not a single one clear.

Stiles stopped in his tracks and held the paper in front of him, his eyes roaming throught the words again and again, the trembling of his hands a little bit more stable.

He knew the word under all the angry ink lines.

It was the same, every time.

_Banshee._

He remembered having stepped on the word in the middle of his late searching session the night before. He hadn’t been even looking for information about it, it just showed up at some point between concept and concept, in the infinte thread of supernatural things he didn’t seemed to be able to stop pulling from.

Stiles remembered having lost the rythem of his breathing for a second and his mind go blank. Having written the word, ready to look for more information about it, just to cross it out furiously some moments later. Having hovered over the link that the name leaded to, again and again, each time summoning Lydia’s eyes in his mind, green and bright. He remember how, one of the times, Lydia’s eyes had turned red and watery, confused and insane, while the scream teared her throat apart.

The scream for Allison.

Stiles had closed the navigation window that same moment, breathed deeply and, body shaking, gone down to the kitchen to see if the water could make the knot choking his traquea disappear.

_Breathe._

_Fear._

_Breathe._

He had been trying to get away from the thing thinking about some other, until Malia had slipped through his window, with a cold breeze, and he had been pulled away from his searching. Which had left plenty of room in his mind to memorize the link about banshees, keeping him awake most of the night.

Awake, feeling like the worst person in the world because he _knew_ that any information about banshees could help Lydia, make her life easier, could maybe make her avoid some of the pain, the suffering.

He was an _awful_ person.

“Stiles.”

Malia’s voice startled him. The trembling in his hands went back enough time to make the paper fall through his fingers and to the desk.

He truned towards her with a forced smile pulling at his lips.

“Yeah?”

The girl, laying on his bed, with a math book opened at the same page since almost an hour, rolled until she was face up and looking at him with her head tilted.

“You got one of these blue highlighters things?” she asked, holding up her own. “I think this one doesn’t work anymore.”

Stiles’ smile turned a bit more sincere as he saw how Malia looked at the object on her left hand with a frown. He bit down on his lip, holding back his explanation as to why it actually didn’t work anymore. Malia didn’t really care about those things.

He turned around to search in the drawers under his desk, when his brain went over the question again and he realized something.

“Blue?” he turned to her again. “What do you use blue for?”

He walked towards the bed to take a glance a the book covered in different colors. He knew what color code Malia used, he had seen it every day while he helped her study.

Green. Yellow. Red.

Blue.

It was the first time he saw blue on her notes —Lydia’s, actually—, and he couldn’t figure out what utility she had made for it.

He looked up while Malia rolled and laid upside down again to look back at him.

“Lydia.”

Stiles didn’t know if it was because he was terribly tired or because his functions were greatly failing, but he couldn’t establish a connection between Lydia and the current situation.

“Lydia?”

“The colors” Malia pointed at the book covered in colored ink. “I already told you that every one meant something” she held the blue highlighter in front of him. “And blue is just because it’s pretty, so it’s for the things I like.

She let her hand fall and started to tap the highlighter on the book.

“It was Lydia’s idea.” She continue. “She said it’d be easier and faster to understand colors than letters, and that the instant recognition would adapt better with my coyote instincts.” She looked at him through her eyelashes. “She also said you’d understand the colors better and would be able to help me more easily.”

After a moment of confusion —maybe just mere disbelief—, Stiles blinked and swallowed the knot in his throat that threatened to steal his voice.

_Lydia. Lydia. Lydia._

_“What do the different color strings mean?”_

_“Oh, they’re just different stages of the investigation. So, like, green is solved. Yellow is to be determined. Blue’s just pretty.”_

_“What does red mean?”_

_“Uh, unsolved.”_

_“You only have red on the board.”_

_“Yes, I’m aware. Thank you.”_

_Lydia._

Then, he smiled at Malia and took the highlighter from her hand, caressing her knuckles.

“It’s a good color code.”

His voice tone got a smile from Malia’s face while she noded and watched him get up for another highlighter.

 

* * *

 

That night, sitting in front of his desk, just before his daily seaching session, the words escaped his fingers, tapping letter on his mobile screen.

_Thank you for helping Malia so much._

The answer may have been a while after and a simple “no problem” that barely a month before would’ve been horribly hard and sharp for any of them, but Stiles considered it a victory, because he hadn’t hoped she’d even respond —not that he deserved it—.

So his eyes read and read the text as many times as it took for him to convince himself that it was really her, that it was really the first time in almost a month that they spoke directly.

That night, his first search was the link about _banshees_ he had memorized.

**Author's Note:**

> This was written a long, long time ago.


End file.
